How well can you explain things?

As a therapist, I think this concept is particularly relevant. Many clients come in to my office without a basic emotional vocabulary. We can only understand things that we can describe.

Sometimes I ask my clients to imagine a caveman with only two words for feelings: Good and Bad. How do you feel, caveman?

Someone has more rocks than you do? “Bad”.

Your friend was eaten by a pterodactyl? “Bad”.

Afraid of the dark? “Bad”.

Wooly mammoth outside your cave? “Bad”...or maybe “Good”?

So we need to help our clients see that increasing their ability to describe their internal landscape will be most helpful. Also, we have to be able to explain concepts clearly ourselves.

Many of our clients attend or attended schools that do or did not emphasize language arts. As such, we have to pick our words even more carefully when explaining concepts.

Randall Munroe, author of geeky-humor webcomic xkcd, is coming out with a new book called “Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words”. It’s a book of diagrams explaining complicated things, using only the thousand most common words in the English language.

In the spirit of explaining things simply, here is a link to this entire post, up to the paragraph before last, using only the thousand most common words.

Shimmy Feintuch, LCSW CASAC-G maintains a private practice in Brooklyn, NY, and Washington Heights, NYC, with specialties in addictions and anxiety. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University. Contact: (530) 334-6882 or shimmyfeintuch@gmail.com. 

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